In a semiconductor manufacturing process such as, for example, a coating process that coats a photoresist on a semiconductor in a coating device and a developing process of an exposed photoresist in a developing device, various processes are executed.
For example, in the coating process, it is required to always monitor a state of the process from handling of a liquid such as a resist liquid. Thus, it is known to image and monitor flow of a series of processings in the process using, for example, a monitoring camera (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2011-14849).
In addition to imaging the flow of a series of processings in a process using a monitoring camera and monitoring whether an abnormal event occurs as described above, for an event of which an occurring location may be specified to a certain extent, for example, liquid dripping of a resist liquid from a nozzle, presence/absence of an abnormality may be electronically detected by specifying and monitoring the nozzle portion.
However, an abnormal event such as, for example, splash of liquid or occurrence of a liquid ball, happens accidentally or irregularly without being limited to a specific portion. In connection with this, the following method has been employed. In order to detect such general abnormalities, a moving picture obtained by imaging a process is stored as data sampled according to a time sequence. After the occurrence of the abnormalities has been founded, modules of a process apparatus, through which a semiconductor wafer having the abnormalities has passed, are investigated. In addition, from a time stamp at the time when the semiconductor wafer has passed, the moving picture at that time is specified and projected on a monitor and an operator checks the moving picture by visual observation so as to confirm the abnormality of the process.